What is the purpose of the HIPAA Privacy Regulations?
The purpose of the Privacy Regulations is to set minimum national standards regarding the confidentiality of individuals’ protected health information. “Protected health information” is any individually identifiable health information, including billing and demographic information, that is transmitted or maintained in any form or medium. Generally, health information is considered “identifiable” if it contains any of the following elements: (1) names; (2) geographic subdivision (e.g., street address, city, county and zip code); (3) names of relatives; (4) name of employer; (5) birth date; (6) date of treatments; (7) telephone numbers; (8) fax numbers; (9) e-mail address; (10) SSN; (11) medical record number; (12) health plan beneficiary number; (13) account number; (14) license number; (15) vehicle identifiers, serial numbers, license plate numbers; (16) device identifiers and serial numbers; (17) Internet addresses; (18) Internet Protocol address numbers; (19) biometric identifiers, i
The purpose of the Privacy Regulations is to set minimum national standards regarding the confidentiality of individuals’ protected health information. “Protected health information” is any individually identifiable health information, including billing and demographic information, that is transmitted or maintained in any form or medium. Generally, health information is considered “identifiable” if it contains any of the following elements: (1) names; (2) geographic subdivision (e.g., street address, city, county and zip code); (3) names of relatives; (4) name of employer; (5) birthdate; (6) date of treatments; (7) telephone numbers; (8) fax numbers; (9) e-mail address; (10) SSN; (11) medical record number; (12) health plan beneficiary number; (13) account number; (14) license number; (15) vehicle identifiers, serial numbers, license plate numbers; (16) device identifiers and serial numbers; (17) URLs; (18) Internet Protocol address numbers; (19) biometric identifiers, including finger
The purpose of the HIPAA administrative simplification provisions (which include the privacy protection requirements) is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the health care system, by encouraging the development of a health information system through the establishment of standards and requirements for the electronic transmission of certain health information. Section 261 of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, Public Law 104-191. (The administrative simplification provisions are designed to produce a single set of national billing codes.) The purpose of the HIPAA privacy regulations is to protect individual health information from unauthorized disclosure, and to improve the accuracy of individual health information by allowing individuals to access their health information and to request amendment of that information if it is inaccurate or incomplete. Minimum national privacy standards are necessary as more and more health information is transmitt
